Thursday, 6 November 2008

A Lesson in Umpiring

As told to me by an experienced umpire, about what he learned in younger days....

Once upon a time there was a friendly umpire at a nice event. He was enjoying the sailing and had a great time flying his flags.

Because he was in such a good mood, he showed the green and white flag with extra zest and enthusiasm. But if needed, he blew his whistle also extra loud for a blue or yellow penalty if he thought it was an "extra" deserving penalty.

In Flight five, Match two, the two opponents were not very even. Yellow had clearly been doing this a lot longer than Blue and in the second downwind leg had almost an 80% lead.

Our happy umpire was a good hundred meters away from the windward mark, when he saw the boom of the Blue trailing boat, hit the orange Mark.~Lets give them a break~ he thought, ~they are so far behind, I will pretend I didn't see it, and not penalize them~

Five seconds later the halyard of the spinnaker on the Yellow boat broke with a loud snap and the spinnaker dropped in the water. The boat all but stopped. The crew immediately went to work to clear up the mess.

Blue sailed on and halved the distance.

Yellow - still a good 40 meters away from the finish - struggled to get the wet spi out from under the bow.

Blue found a little extra wind and came closer and closer.

Yellow still moved agonizingly slow.

Our happy Umpire started to worry a bit and he motored closer.

Blue was only ten meters behind Yellow when they finally cleared the spinnaker out of the water and picked up a little more speed.

In the meantime Blue, flying a beautiful red kite themselves, sailed to leeward of Yellow and created an overlap. Our umpire's hart sank when the Race Committee showed a blue flag when the boats crossed the finish line.

The difference was only one meter, the race officer told our umpire after the Match. With a served penalty, Yellow would have had time to finish first...

Happy no longer, our umpire tried to console himself with a promise:Never will I not give a penalty out of pity or happiness. Hitting a Mark equals a flag. No exceptions.....

The End.

"My marriage is like a fairy tale""Every time I come home, there's that Witch sitting on the couch"

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EXCERPT from the NOTEBOOKS of LAZARUS LONG (*1916-†4272)

What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbours think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!